Trump thinks he invaded California and turned on a magic water faucet

Donald Trump claimed on Monday that the military was dispatched to California in an operation to provide water to fight the wildfires. This, of course, was the latest lie in years of Trump’s falsehoods on water-related issues—which has turned out to be a fixation for him.

“The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!”

A few hours later, the California Department of Water Resources corrected the record on its X account. 

“The military did not enter California. The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful,” the department said.

Trump’s post was an apparent attempt to deepen the false narrative he has clung to for years: That California’s wildfires are a result of water conservation policies promoted by the environmental movement.

During the latest crisis, state water officials and other scientific experts have made clear that water supply problems have not actually hurt ongoing firefighting operations.

“Water supply has not hindered firefighting efforts. Reservoirs in California are at or above average storage levels for this time of year, thanks in part to years of proactive water management,” an Association of California Water Agencies statement said.

The episode is just another example of Trump’s often absurd obsession with water-related rhetoric, including a reference to an apparently magical faucet that could solve long-standing resource issues.

In other discussions about California’s water management, Trump has argued that California officials merely had to “turn the valve” to provide “massive amounts of water” to Los Angeles. No such valve exists.

He has also argued that the state could use Canadian water sources like a “very large faucet” to alleviate water shortages. 

“It’s somebody that doesn’t fully understand how water works and doesn’t understand the intricacies of allocating water not only between two countries but also for the environment,” Tricia Stadnyk, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Calgary, said. 

Conveniently but perhaps not surprising, Trump’s California golf club could financially benefit from loosening environmental restrictions on water.

While campaigning last year, Trump took a break from spreading disinformation and lies about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene and informed the public that the hurricane—as all hurricanes do—contained water.

“It was a vicious, it was water, the water was the worst we’d ever seen, it was a water hurricane, that’s what it was,” he said.

During his first term in 2017, Trump said that his administration’s response to Puerto Rico’s hurricanes was hampered by “big water.”

“This is an island. Surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water,” he said.

In 2019, Trump was widely ridiculed for using the White House’s historic Roosevelt Room to deliver a rant about toilets.

“We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on—and in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it, and you don’t get any water,” he said.

He went on to note, while hosting a roundtable with small business leaders, “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.”

At the same event, Trump also complained about faucets.

“You go into a new building or a new house or a new home and they have standards only you don’t get water. You can’t wash your hands practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet. And the end result is you leave the faucet on and it takes you much longer to wash your hands,” he said.

A year later, Trump still had water on his mind.

“So showerheads—you take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair—I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect,” Trump said in 2020.

“Dishwashers—you didn’t have any water, so you—the people that do the dishes—you press it, and it goes again, and you do it again and again,” he added. “So you might as well give them the water because you’ll end up using less water.”

In similarly bizarre rants, Trump complained that regulations requiring electric batteries in boats would lead to shark attacks and suggested that magnetic power is disrupted by water.

Water doesn’t stop magnetism, just like there are no magical faucets. But Trump’s nonsensical water rhetoric continues to flow on and on.

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